An updated version of the Three Strikes Spam Plugin, now in version 1.1 Beta, is available for download.

I started to receive a few Spam comments yesterday and I realized that the built in WordPress “Common Spam Words” filter does not account for encoded information. In other words, if a spammer encodes the contents of the comment, URL etc, it does not get caught as spam (though some items will get caught). This new version of the plugin uses a function that acts like the Javascript unescape command (in PHP) and decodes encoded entities. The php function, and consequently, the Three Strikes plugin, will check for Unicode and ASCII characters, convert them to plain letters and characters (unencoded) and then run the spam checker on this information. I will be working on implementing this within Kitten’s Spam Words plugin as well.

Download the new plugin from here. Installation and upgrade are as simple as renaming this file as threestrikes.php, copying it to your wp-content/plugins directory and then enabling it within your admin interface. Please post bugs/suggestions.

[EDIT] The offer to share my personal “Common Spam Words” still stands. I have enough words in there to populate Google. Email me with requests if you want to use that.

[EDIT] If you want my list of spam words, please include a link to your blog with the request so I know that you are not a spammer.

[EDIT] Now with Trackback checking built in. To update, just download the plugin again and re-upload to your blog.

That makes sense Michael. However, I think it would be the preference of the blog owner. On this blog, your observation makes sense. I do not know how it would be different for anyone else, but someone MIGHT be encoding for some reason.
I should make it a choice. I wish I could come up with an acceptable way of configuring plugins from the admin interface.

There is a definite problem with this plugin. I downloaded it yesterday and activated it. There was no problems until I was receiving emails that people were not able to post comments on my website. It seemed that it changed the link of the “Say It” where you submit the comment (like your “Post” button below) so that it goes to http://www.fbi.gov website.

The minute I deactivated the plugin, people were able to post comments again. Please let me know how this is able to be fixed and if anybody else had this problem.

I have set up yuour plugin, but when I try to login I get the following message.
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/sites/kendixon.net/public_html/findias/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php:145) in /home/sites/kendixon.net/public_html/findias/wp-login.php on line 257

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/sites/kendixon.net/public_html/findias/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php:145) in /home/sites/kendixon.net/public_html/findias/wp-login.php on line 258

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/sites/kendixon.net/public_html/findias/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php:145) in /home/sites/kendixon.net/public_html/findias/wp-login.php on line 259

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/sites/kendixon.net/public_html/findias/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php:145) in /home/sites/kendixon.net/public_html/findias/wp-login.php on line 260

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/sites/kendixon.net/public_html/findias/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php:145) in /home/sites/kendixon.net/public_html/findias/wp-login.php on line 261

I’ve been having some problems with these spam plugins. After installing three strikes, the wp-login.php page gave me this error:

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/moero/www/www/blog/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php:2) in /home/moero/www/www/blog/wp-admin/index.php on line 13

If anybody could give me a hand here, that would be great. Thank you!!

I’ve noticed an issue with comments that contain single quotes and double quotes…they get escaped with an extra slash if ThreeStrikesSpam is activated. It seems that add_magic_quotes is being called twice on $_POST: once in 3SS, and again in wp-comments-post.php in my WP 1.2 install. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

If that happens, you can take out these lines:
if ($_POST[‘comment’] && !is_array($_POST[‘comment’])) {
//Make sure the information received is parsed, cleaned and stripped correctly (from WP codebase)
if (!get_magic_quotes_gpc()) {
$_POST = add_magic_quotes($_POST);
$_COOKIE = add_magic_quotes($_COOKIE);
}

Umm… I am having a problem. The plugin used to work fine. But when I tested it out just now, I keep getting errors such as the following instead of getting redirected to the FBI site.

Warning: Unknown modifier ‘C’ in /home/little/public_html/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php on line 110
Warning: Unknown modifier ‘C’ in /home/little/public_html/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php on line 111
Warning: Unknown modifier ‘C’ in /home/little/public_html/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php on line 112
Warning: Unknown modifier ‘C’ in /home/little/public_html/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php on line 113Warning: Unknown modifier ‘H’ in /home/little/public_html/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php on line 110
Warning: Unknown modifier ‘H’ in /home/little/public_html/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php on line 111
Warning: Unknown modifier ‘H’ in /home/little/public_html/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php on line 112
Warning: Unknown modifier ‘H’ in /home/little/public_html/wp-content/plugins/threestrikes.php on line 113

I have deactivated the plugin, downloaded a new copy, uploaded it, and reactivated it again. But still no avail.

Hi,
I’m brand new to plugins, so sorry for the uninformed question, but when you say “enable it within your admin interface”, do you mean setting the permissions? If so, what should they be? If not, what does it mean?
Thanks for making your work available like this,
Amy

I’ve upgraded my threestrikes plugin to threestrikes12.php and it works great to catch the bad stuff, for what it’s worth, so did the previous one.

But just like with the original threestrikes I still have the problem of backslashes showing up in comments before apostrophes and quote marks. I saw the post above and looked for that code supplied to delete it but do not find it in the plugin’s code.

Warning: Division by zero in /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-content/plugins/bayes/class.naivebayesian.php on line 80

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-content/plugins/bayes/class.naivebayesian.php:80) in /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-comments-post.php on line 44

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-content/plugins/bayes/class.naivebayesian.php:80) in /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-comments-post.php on line 45

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-content/plugins/bayes/class.naivebayesian.php:80) in /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-comments-post.php on line 46

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-content/plugins/bayes/class.naivebayesian.php:80) in /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-comments-post.php on line 48

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-content/plugins/bayes/class.naivebayesian.php:80) in /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-comments-post.php on line 49

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-content/plugins/bayes/class.naivebayesian.php:80) in /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-comments-post.php on line 50

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-content/plugins/bayes/class.naivebayesian.php:80) in /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-comments-post.php on line 51

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-content/plugins/bayes/class.naivebayesian.php:80) in /usr/home/zero/domains/obscurethoughts.net/public_html/wp-comments-post.php on line 55

Cheap Meat
I’ve just checked my mail after a couple of days away from the computer and was greeted by over one hundred new blog comments notifications and around four hundred ‘please check this comment’ messages. All of it spam. This resulted in something like…

About the Author

Mark Ghosh

An avid fan of business, education, technology and finance. I lead a lean, highly focussed and capable team of Java Back End developers and Front End developers through a maze of complex software wizardry to fulfill the web maintenance needs of a large chemical manufacturer. As per Myers-Briggs Personality Types, I am an ESTJ. I pride in a project completed on time and according to plan. My hobbies include all kinds of technology, anything that I can taste and anything that goes fast or flies in the air. I like to read business books and comics in my spare time.